So I was thinking about my meeting with Minoru "Ark" Akuzawa and he asked me to do an aikido technique for his attack. He gave some gentle, obvious shomen uchi symbolic attack and I "blended" with it and was "leading" him, when suddenly, "he stopped "following" and the "connection" that I had with him, and by which I was "leading" him caused all my energetic contributions to the technique to rebound back into me myself and I was jolted away from Ark as he suddenly simply stopped.

When I remebered this today, the epiphany was immediate: "He stopped himself." I knew that, of course, but the significance was how it relates to this phrase I see so often.

Saying that uke "stopped my technique" is utterly backward. Uke doesn't stop my technique. Uke stops himself. If he can do that--simply control himself--my technique falls apart on its own.

Hello David

I've been meaning to catch you discussing Akuzawa sensei in relation to Mochizuki Sensei for a while. From what I gathered in my very limited time training with the Seifukai, stopping technique was not so unusual there. I got shut down big time during my first practice. A lot of the time it was by people physically weaker than me so I was/am interested in "how" I got shut down. It's been a while since you were kind enough to teach me a little about the history of the Seifukai, but I was wondering if you could elaborate a little more in the light of recent discussions in the aikido community.

How does Akuzawa Sensei compare to Mochizuki Sensei? I didn't get to train with Mochizuki Sensei himself, but I did get to feel his direct students such as Sugiyama Sensei. I realise Seifukai/Yoseikan is a sogo budo but I wonder how you would compare the feeling of training with someone like Mochizuki to Akuzawa Sensei. What I personally want to know is, do you think the IP/aiki of Akuzawa Sensei is something that's completely absent from Mochizuki Sensei's aikido or something that simply exists on a more profound scale in Akuzawa Sensei's Aunkai Bujutsu? Or is it more complicated than that?